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From Insider, a Comics Venture to Help Newcomers

If the comic book writer Robert Kirkman were a superhero, his name might be the Midas Touch.

Mr. Kirkman began his comic book career by self-publishing, got noticed by Marvel Comics and in 2008, became a partner at Image Comics, one of the major independent comic book houses. One of his series, The Walking Dead, will have its debut as an AMC television series in October.

Now Mr. Kirkman is starting his own imprint, Skybound, in the hopes of recruiting the next generation of comic book creators to get their work off the ground and be noticed.

“Looking back, I certainly could’ve used the help when I started,” Mr. Kirkman said by phone from his home in Richmond, Ky.

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Brandon Seifert, left, and Lukas Ketner created Witch Doctor, a horror-medical drama, which is to be the first title published by Skybound.Credit
Brian Lee for The New York Times

Hollywood has a vested interest in the comic book industry, whose characters can sometimes lead to blockbuster business at the box office. The 2000 release of “X-Men”began the latest infatuation that has led to highs (“Spider-Man,”“The Dark Knight”) and lows (“Jonah Hex”and “The Losers”).

Last year, the Walt Disney Company swooped in to acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion and get access to its library of 5,000 characters. This year, Warner Brothers Entertainment reorganized DC Comics with an aim to make its characters available everywhere consumers are.

Mr. Kirkman’s plan is to offer creators advance payments and a marketing push. If the book proves successful and attracts outside attention, Mr. Kirkman will also help navigate things like international publication rights and licensing in other media — including film, TV and toys. In return, he will get a partnership stake in all of Skybound’s properties. That investment can include percentages on any feature film, TV or merchandising deals.

“It’s a whole new world out there. It’s hard to do any comic book without having an expectation of what could happen. It’s such a prevalent and integral part of our business,” he said.

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The cover of the first issue of Witch Doctor.Credit
Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner

Skybound’s first offering will be the horror-medical drama Witch Doctor, by Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner. “It’s ‘House’ meets ‘Fringe,’ ” Mr. Seifert said during a conference call with Mr. Ketner. The book will take monsters from fiction and folklore and examine them through the lens of real world science.

The creators of Witch Doctor, who are both 29 and based in Portland, Ore., came to Mr. Kirkman’s attention through the Internet. In 2008, Mr. Ketner provided an editorial illustration to Willamette Week, a weekly newspaper in Portland, that rendered Barack Obama as the hero of a Harlequin Romance book cover. After it was printed, the image made its way around the Web.

“I got a lot of mileage out of that,” Mr. Ketner said.

Mr. Kirkman saw the image, looked up Mr. Ketner’s Web site and found an earlier version of Witch Doctor. “I asked them what was going on with the book and why it hadn’t come out yet,” Mr. Kirkman said.

“Most every artist I worked with, I found through the Internet,” he said. “I should probably give the Internet a commission.”

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A page from the first issue of Witch Doctor.Credit
Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner

Having Mr. Kirkman’s stamp of approval and marketing acumen was critical. “We’re two unknown creators with an unknown book. There is no other option like this,” Mr. Seifert said. Mr. Ketner agreed: “His support and his name to help get our book going and our career started really means a lot to us.”

Witch Doctor will be introduced Thursday at the Comic-Con convention in San Diego.

Mr. Kirkman has accomplished a lot with his creator-owned books. Invincible, about a young superhero, and The Walking Dead, about a band of survivors in a world overrun with zombies, have slowly climbed the sales charts since their inception. A sales chart analysis on The Beat, a blog covering comics, reported that the June issue of Walking Dead, No. 73, would probably be the month’s best-selling title not published by Marvel or DC, the industry leaders. Invincible and The Walking Dead are modest hits, but they are critically acclaimed and have transcended their origins: Invincible was adapted for MTV2. The Walking Dead will be broadcast as a live-action series on AMC.

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Both of Mr. Kirkman’s titles will move from the Image banner to that of Skybound. The move, he says, will help ease some of the administrative chores that he has had to attend to as a one-man publishing operation. For that reason, plans for future expansion will be modest.

“I’d like to expand at the rate AMC has. They had ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Mad Men’ for a long time, but it was awhile before they started branching out to other things,” Mr. Kirkman said.

All that TV talk aside, Skybound’s first priority is finding good comics. “I’m also looking for things that appeal to a wide audience,” he said. “I’m also hoping to break new ground and do new things, and those just naturally translate into other mediums.” Even so, “I’m not going to publish anything that would be a bad comic but would make an excellent TV show.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 19, 2010, on Page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: From Insider, a Comics Venture to Help Newcomers. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe